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Letter from our CEO

November 2017

Our biggest and best-ever Rocket.Build is now in the history books. We opened our Rocket.Build 2017 on Sunday, October 22, welcoming 150 of our software engineers from 12 countries and five continents.

Our theme for this year’s Rocket.Build was “the API Economy.” From Sunday night through Thursday, our 40 teams worked on API-enabling everything in our software portfolio. That in itself was great progress. But what made it more impressive, impactful, and meaningful is that there was significant collaboration among the teams. Teams were helping each other, sharing code, and sharing resources. But the sharing of common architectures allowed many of the projects to fit and work together. The result was a true multiplier effect: two projects coming together created a third (and sometimes unexpected) solution.

Rocket.Build Ribbon Cutting

Rocket.Build Ribbon Cutting

The other thing I noticed is that our software engineers were designing their projects from the outside in. When presenting their projects to me – I get to see all of the projects and select one to receive the coveted Rocket.Build Founders Cup – the teams talked about personas and use cases and critical business value. That outside in thinking, designing for specific individuals and roles within an enterprise, is something that you don’t always see at hackathons. We also got the marketing team formally involved to provide an additional layer of collaboration to the event and bring people who normally wouldn’t be part of a coding event into the process.

Rocket.Build is a week where we get to exercise and tone our creativity and innovation muscles. Our engineers enter a time and space where they can build the next generation of Rocket software, software that will create our “what’s next”. This year, our teams went a step beyond and connected that “what’s next” to our customers and partners.

I am excited to see the best of our Rocket.Build projects find their way through our software development process so we can deliver new solutions to you in 2018. Let us know if you would like an early preview.

Founders Cup Winners

Founders Cup Winners

Andrew J. Youniss
President and CEO, Rocket Software, Inc.

The Rocket Band performed at the Rocket.Build closing ceremony, which was held at the Hard Rock Café in Boston. Here are a few of the songs that the crowd seemed to enjoy the most.

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"Basket Case" Coding competitions are one of my favorite parts about being an engineer, but there’s no doubt that they can leave your brain feeling a bit “fried.” If you’re feeling a little loopy after staring at code for too long, there’s no shame in taking a break and rocking out to this classic Green Day track for a few minutes.

"I Wanna Be Sedated" No one can match the Ramones for pure punk energy and speed: Their early performances were so short and the songs so fast that they often needed to perform the same set twice just to fill their slot. (That means there’s time to listen to this one twice.)

"Say It Ain’t So" This and Weezer’s other big hit, “The Sweater Song,” are two of the most irrefutably 90s songs out there. So go on, sing along to those big choruses—you know you want to.

"All The Small Things" One of the most influential bands of the late 90s/early 00s, Blink-182 practically invented the pop-punk sound we all know and love. Though they continue to record and tour under a modified lineup, for me it was always guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge’s earnest voice and lyrics (featured here) that made their signature sound.